


in our sorrow, in the sun

by propinquitous



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Father's Day, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Making Out, Past Child Abuse, Trauma, about all the fucked up shit that ever happened to you, sometimes you've just gotta sob into your partner's chest, then laugh and kiss about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 04:19:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19221448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitous/pseuds/propinquitous
Summary: Eliot and Quentin cope with their losses."I guess I just. I also feel bad? Because your dad sucks and I don't want to, like, burden you with missing mine.""Oh, no, Q, honey, that's not how that works. You're always allowed to miss him." Eliot pressed another kiss to his forehead, his cheek. "You wanna talk about it?"





	in our sorrow, in the sun

**Author's Note:**

> for everyone with a dead parent or a shitty parent, and every complicated thing in between.

Sunday mornings had, at some point, become Eliot's favorite thing. He loved the relative quiet that settled over everything, the slow buzz of the city that never rose to the roar of the weekday. Even if the city never truly stopped to rest, there was something about the early morning hours that leant it to solitude, to grace; everything slowed. Now pushing thirty, he felt most like himself during this time. He loved the languid energy, the precious moments between waking and rising, now that he could afford them. He no longer woke up in fits and starts, at five and again at noon, blistering with a hangover. Instead he woke up slowly, with the sun, next to Quentin. It was more than he ever expected to have.

This Sunday was no different. He woke up before Quentin sometime after six and laid in bed, flipping through the news on his phone. Eventually he gave himself to reading and sidled up against Quentin's back, his elbow propped up on Quentin's hip. Sunlight filtered through the curtains, blue at first, and slowly shifted into egg-yolk yellow as it rose. It filled the room with a warm, buttery haze that signaled the coming heat of summer and made Eliot feel loose-limbed, lethargic at the promise of heavy air and longer days. He set his book down, never a focused reader, and watched as the light drifted over Quentin's face. He felt a profound stillness, his body settling like an old house. Watching Quentin inhale in the steady determination of sleep stirred affection deep in his belly.

Quentin yawned and rolled over.

"Hey," he said, smacking his lips. He pulled Eliot closer and rested his head on his stomach, eyes still closed. His hair, shorter now but still enough to run fingers through, fanned out across Eliot's abdomen. It pushed the affection up into his chest and made it go tight with longing. He felt Quentin nuzzle his bare skin, like he felt Eliot's need pulling him closer.

They lay like that for a while, in comfortable silence. Eliot ran his fingers through Quentin's hair while he dozed. He watched the light through the strands where he pulled them, a little brainless. He pulled together a few pieces and twisted them, one over the over, let them unravel, twisted again. In many ways, this was the sort of stillness he'd searched for for years, the quiet he'd sought out in alcohol and drugs and in the hands of other people. It was a constant search for numbness, anything to still the rapid cycling of destructive thoughts. Being in love hadn't fixed him - he had to work through his addictions the old fashioned way and in many ways, still had work to do - but it had given him a framework, the scaffolding he needed to begin to heal. And he was grateful to have this, to have Quentin warm against him on a Sunday in June, in the gentle calm of the morning. It was his foundation.

Quentin finally stirred and looked up.

"Sleep well?" Eliot asked. Quentin nodded and his hair tickled Eliot's skin.

"Yeah, been mostly up for a while but. You know how I get when you play with my hair." He smiled and pressed a kiss to Eliot's ribs. His mouth was warm against Eliot's cool skin. Eliot could see from the crease in his brow that there was something else; he'd always thought of himself as perceptive, but it was a skill he'd honed to a fine edge, living with someone with depression. He knew what it looked like when Quentin had something on his mind.

"What's up?" he said, casually. He also knew not to press too hard.

Quentin shrugged one shoulder and hugged him tightly, once around the waist. "Kinda feeling weird this morning, I guess." He looked up at Eliot and smiled, a little weak.

Eliot shifted until they laid face-to-face. 

"What's going on, Q?" he said. Quentin took a moment to look up and answer. His eyes were almost honey-colored in the bright morning sun.

"Mm, just Father's Day. I don't know," he said and shrugged again.

"That makes sense." He tucked Quentin's hair behind his ear and waited until he looked up. "You don't have to say you don't know when you do. That's a bad habit of yours," Eliot said and smiled, small and private. He drew Quentin in and kissed him, lips dry with sleep. Eliot would never be able to get enough of Quentin's softness, of how pliant he went in Eliot's arms. He made it so easy to love him and he had no idea.

"I guess I just. I also feel bad? Because your dad sucks and I don't want to, like, burden you with missing mine."

"Oh, no, Q, honey, that's not how that works. You're always allowed to miss him." Eliot pressed another kiss to his forehead, his cheek. "You wanna talk about it?"

Quentin looked at him for one, long moment and pushed up and kissed him. It was slow, intentional, but Eliot felt caught off guard by his insistence. Quentin's palms were flat against his chest and Eliot had the sudden urge to cry at the intimacy of it all, at the way the sheets curled over Quentin's back, at the feeling of the hair on his legs. He could imagine them perfectly from the outside: lit golden against the bright white bedding, he knew they looked like the heart of every embarrassing, romantic fantasy he'd ever had.

"I don't know," Quentin said again. He had barely pulled far enough away to speak, but Eliot could see the frown lines near his nose.

"Hey," Eliot said between kisses. "It's okay. What do you miss about him?" He smoothed Quentin's hair back, cupped the back of his skull in his palm. "Will you tell me?"

Quentin inhaled deeply through his nose. "I don't know," he said, closing the distance between them again.

"Quentin," Eliot chided.

He huffed and kissed Eliot once more before pulling away. When he looked up, Eliot could see the incipient wrinkles that framed his mouth and eyes and his heart stuttered, like it had tripped inside his chest. He was grateful that Quentin had lived long enough to get them.

"Yeah, I know, okay," Quentin said. He took another moment, flexing his hands against Eliot's chest. Finally he said, "We were close and we weren't. It's. Complicated I guess. He tried to understand me. You know - he complained a bit but he always bought me whatever little magic kit I wanted. He never said a negative thing when I was hospitalized and I mean, he was the person who really took care of me, especially when I was, you know, at my sickest. So I mean, he did, he did _try_. And I love him for that."

"I'm glad he was a good dad," Eliot said.

"Yeah," Quentin swallowed. "But honestly, sometimes I felt like he was embarrassed that I was his son, I think - it wasn't malicious. He just had specific ideas about who I'd be and then I wasn't that. And I don't feel guilty for not making him proud in the way he expected but, I don't know. I wish he'd lived long enough to see me be, be, God. Not better, exactly. But something."

"You really are something, you know," Eliot said.

Quentin glared without venom. Eliot rolled his eyes.

"I mean it," Eliot said and kissed his cheek. He pitched his voice a little lower, trying to convey the seriousness he felt. "You are."

Quentin's eyes fell closed and he sighed. "I wish he could see that all the weird shit from when I was a kid, that it ended up, that it mattered, you know? That all of my broken brain stuff and my fixations - it all brought me here. It brought me magic, gave me somewhere to put everything down, at least sometimes. It all brought me to you, and you make me better, you help me to be better. And I wish he could see that."

Eliot did his best not to fill the silence that followed. He waited, watching Quentin's downcast eyes, observing dustmotes that floated through the now white sunlight. He watched the steady rise and fall of Quentin's chest and tried to match it.

"When I first got sick," Quentin said after a while, "he'd go to these support groups, you know, like for families of people with _mental illness_." There was disdain in his voice, for the label or the generalization, Eliot didn't know. "And I'm glad he went, I really am. It meant he was trying. But I found out at one point that they talk a lot about _their_ lost dreams, about accepting all the things that I'd never do because I was too sick. And it makes me really angry to think of him thinking of me like that, even if he was right at the time or if he needed to think of things that way."

"You've come so far, Q," Eliot said. He ached at the thought of Quentin thinking he'd never get out of bed again, at imagining him immobilized. He knew that it was always a risk, that relapse and episodes were always a possibility, even a likelihood. But they had plans for that, steps they both knew to take; if he imagined Quentin disabled again by depression, he could imagine them together, seeing it through. What he couldn't imagine was ever giving up.

Quentin shook his head.

"What hurts for me is that, you know, I feel like I never got the chance to show him that I could be okay. I feel like I let him down and I know it's stupid but. I wish he could see where I ended up because I know he'd be proud of me now. I'm old enough now that I think that we'd be friends. And to miss out on that kills me, a little,” he said and his voice wasn’t sad, exactly, but Eliot recognized the hollowed out quality to it that usually meant Quentin was downplaying the strength of his feelings.

"That makes sense," Eliot said.

"Does it?" 

"Yeah, of course, sweetheart. Why wouldn't you miss what you never got to have? I miss it _for_ you. You deserved to have that."

And he did, Eliot knew. He'd never considered the possibility of being friends with his parents but he knew it was something other people felt, sometimes, that it was often a sign that you were growing into adulthood. He felt a brief but sharp pang behind his breastbone and tried to ignore it.

Quentin was silent for another moment before he said, "Do you ever miss your dad?"

Taken aback, Eliot chewed his lip. It wasn't that the question hurt him or made him sad, exactly. More that it was a question he hadn't considered in a very long time. It felt far off like a collapsing star, something cataclysmic that didn't affect him until it did, until long after the damage had been done.

He took Quentin's hand and squeezed while he tried to decide what to say.

"No, I don't miss him," he started, "or feel sorry for him. It's more that I wish he were something else so that I could feel either of those things," he said and sighed, his head pillowed against his arm. He watched Quentin's expression for a reaction but his eyes were only open, patient, giving Eliot space to find his words. He took a deep breath and a few heavy seconds passed in his lungs.

Eliot said, "I wish he weren't cruel, that he was just sick. Which, to be clear, he is, I think, there's no way he doesn't have some kind of disorder or depression, at least -" He registered Quentin's face and realized with a brief stab of panic what Quentin thought he was saying and reached out to cradle his cheek. "No, not, my point is that I could live with that, if that were all it was. I love you, Q, don't you ever for one second think otherwise about any part of you. I love your brain, broken parts and all." He pulled him in against his chest, held him tight until he felt Quentin's arms as tightly wrapped around him. He breathed him in, the solid existence of him, and let go.

"It's okay," Quentin said. "I know - I know what you mean." He gave half a smile and kissed Eliot's palm, leaving it resting against his cheek. "Keep talking."

Eliot stroked Quentin's cheek with his thumb absentmindedly. "The problem with my dad is that it's _not_ anything like that. The reality is that he's a bad person who treated me so, so terribly,” he said.

It had been years since Eliot had really talked about his father. As soon as he’d left home, he’d put him out of his mind and even though Eliot knew it wouldn’t always work, that his specter was always bound to rise up and remind Eliot of what he’d fled - most days it worked. He was removed, now, and the little boy that had spent years under his father’s violence now lived safely in the back of Eliot’s mind.

This, though, didn’t feel like his father’s usual hauntings. As Eliot spoke, he thought it felt more like an exorcism, painful and wrenching deep in his gut.

"He treated me like I was less than a person, let alone his son,” Eliot said. “I was just a kid and he yelled at me all the time, every day. Especially once I hit middle school or so, it got so, so bad. He hit me - no, let me be clear, he _beat the shit out of me_ and he told me I was going to hell and, Q, he fucked me up, literally." Eliot felt himself starting to cry but it wasn't the tight-throat feeling of strong emotion; it was only the free falling tears of bitterness, helplessness. When Quentin reached out to wipe a tear he closed his eyes and laughed.

"God, I love you," he said, leaning against Quentin's hand.

"I love you, too," Quentin said, like everything could be boiled down to that simple fact. "I'm sorry, I know you've, that you've told me some of this before. I don't mean to push you." 

"No, it's okay, it feels kind of good to try and put words to it because it's just. It's so hard to describe, Q. I don't miss him, I really don't. I know everyone thinks that people with parents like mine must long for them somewhere deep down, that I secretly miss him. They think I should just try harder, that it's somehow the kid's job to fix things with their parents, but even if that were true, here's the thing: I don't think it's hyperbole to say that he never loved me." His heart was racing all of a sudden, thumping hard. He took a deep breath to steady himself and pressed his face against Quentin's palm. "And why would I ever want to convince someone who is supposed to love me unconditionally that I'm worth it? Why would I do that?"

He realized then that the propellant of his heart was anger, a sharp and crystalline rage. He felt it roiling inside him, beating against his ribcage like the February wind on Lake Michigan.

"The truth is that I don't wish he were here because he never was, he never knew me, never asked me about my day, never came to any of my shows, never tried to understand who I was. He had no redeeming qualities; he didn't care and never tried and Q, he didn’t just not love me. He hated me," Eliot said and he was almost gasping, "he really, really did. I hope he never finds me or talks to me again because honestly I might, I don’t know what I’d do.” Just barely, he felt the anger subsiding at the admission. He inhaled as deeply as he could and held onto Quentin as tightly as he could and put all of his energy into finding that foundation, the deep roots that Quentin and he had grown together. It settled him enough to keep going.

“But I do miss,” he said, sniffling and it was only then that he realized he was fully crying. “I don't know, the concept? I wish I could miss him, I guess. I wish I could feel that, that _pull_. Instead I just feel empty and in some ways that feels worse," he said and his throat was tight, painful. He closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of Quentin's skin, both against his face and under his hand. He felt stripped down, as if someone had thrown back the covers and found him naked and feverish. He was exposed, laid bare.

Eliot let himself go. He tilted forward until he was pressed up against Quentin, tucked up under his chin. He sobbed. It didn't feel poetic or meaningful as his nose ran, as Quentin's chest grew wet with his tears and he didn't know why he cried, exactly, because he didn't miss his father; he didn't even know how to want one. Yet his grief was bottomless; he cried and cried and thought that if he could just empty the well of his tears, if he could scrape the floor of it, he might find something secret or valuable at the bottom, pennies full of wishes in a fountain. And he felt guilty, because Quentin was the one with real grief, with the real loss. It wasn't fair to put this on him, he thought, and cried anyway while Quentin's fingers caught in the longer curls at his crown.

For a long time, Quentin said nothing. As Eliot trembled, Quentin's hands did the talking, stroking his back, his arms, his hair. While the pain threatened to shake him apart, Eliot let Quentin hold him together.

Eventually, Eliot quieted. He stayed cocooned in Quentin's arms for what felt like a long time until he finally felt Quentin inhale, preparing to speak. 

"I'm sorry, El, I can't imagine how that feels." Eliot let out one last sob and it was halfway to a laugh; he was relieved that Quentin didn't try to say anything else. The worst thing about revealing himself was never the fear, the vulnerability - it was the risk of other people's attempts at sympathy. He was grateful that Quentin knew him too well to try. Quentin only looked at him with his big, expressive eyes and Eliot could see everything there, all the love and affection and care he could ask for.

Eliot smiled thinly. "It's fine. I mean, well no, obviously it's not _fine_. But most of the time it's okay. I know I probably need to actually deal with it more than I have but I'm not sure how to do that, at this point. I've lived with it for so long." He shrugged and took a deep, rattling breath.

Quentin's finger trailed lightly over his back. He said, "It's, I don't know. I think it's like a death in a lot of ways. You're just mourning a person that should've been there. I think you need to let yourself grieve. It's okay. And for what it's worth, I'm so glad you got away from him. It makes me so fucking angry that he thought he could get away with treating a kid that way, with treating _you_ that way."

"Thank you,” Eliot said. “I mean it. It’s nice, I mean, you spend a lot of time playing this stuff down, you know? You convince yourself it wasn’t that bad because if it was that bad then you probably couldn’t have survived it. Anyway, I just. Thank you. For saying that.”

“You’re welcome,” Quentin said. He looked at Eliot and held his gaze, like he was trying to make sure Eliot believed him.

“You know,” Eliot said, a little embarrassed of his tear-stained, swollen face, “I think I'm supposed to be taking care of you right now.”

"I think it goes both ways, El." Quentin said and Eliot was struck dumb, laid low by Quentin's simple insistence. He closed his eyes and felt the pressure in his chest that meant he might cry again.

"You know you're amazing, right?" Quentin said and God, he had no idea, absolutely no idea what he did to Eliot. It was ridiculous, really, but all at once he managed to light up Eliot's best parts and dampen his worst. Quentin made him better because he made him want to be better, made him want to try harder. If he ever was amazing, it was because Quentin held him up.

Eliot scoffed.

"You are," Quentin said, "you are." He dragged his lips across Eliot's forehead. "You take care of me and I take care of you because that's how this works."

Then, for a while, they were quiet again. Eliot clutched tight at Quentin's sides. He dozed a little, exhausted and on the verge of a headache from crying. He felt wrung out.

"How are you feeling?" Quentin said when Eliot finally shifted. His arms were still firm around Eliot’s shoulders, the weight of his hand soothing on his back.

"I think I'm okay. Are you okay?" He could see that Quentin was still thinking, turning things over in his head and absurdly he thought of the phones he saw in girl's bedrooms on TV when he was small, the ones with clear casings that showed the circuits and faux gears all the way through.

"Yeah. Just thinking about, I don't know, it's dumb but I wish - I wish my dad could meet you. He never saw me in a relationship, you know? And now I have all these fantasies about bringing you home and like, functioning as an adult or something, just so he could see that I can."

"Q, that's not dumb at all. I wish I could meet him, too." He adjusted their positions and wrapped Quentin up in his arms. It was good to feel like the protector again, reassuring to know he could slip so easily back into the role.

"And I wish you could meet him because he helped make me who I am and I feel like there are things about me that would make more sense if you could. And really I just, I think he'd like you."

"Well, let's not push it," Eliot laughed and dropped a kiss to Quentin's hair.

"No, El, I _know_ he would. I wish you could meet him and know him and maybe get to have a dad, just a little, you know?”

Eliot squeezed Quentin's shoulders, too overcome with the weight of the sentiment to speak. It felt like something grew under his skin, in his marrow, something desperate to push through the surface. It reached out for Quentin, wanting everything.

Then Quentin licked his lips and Eliot felt a brief pang of heat at the sight of Quentin's pink tongue. He let out a single, abrupt laugh. His body had always been treacherous.

"What?" Quentin asked, suspicion obvious and a little overplayed.

Eliot shook his head and sighed. His eyes still felt swollen from crying and his throat felt unpleasantly sticky and dense. Still, he couldn't help himself; Quentin was here and alive and loved him, and his perfect, compact body was radiating warmth. He said, "Oh, you know, just getting all worked up because there's a pretty, naked boy in bed with me and we're talking about our daddy issues. This is a very specific fantasy of mine."

For the first time that morning, Quentin blushed. Eliot thought he might burst with fondness, at the way Quentin smiled and stuttered even as they talked about such painful things. But he knew that there was no separating it for them, that pain and joy would always be tangled up together, in the same way that he and Quentin were two sides of a coin, two parts of a whole. They had learned to hold their hurt and their comfort at the same time. It had been and would always be an ongoing process but it was, Eliot thought, so much easier with two pairs of hands.

"That so?" Quentin said, smiling. He shuffled forward until their bodies were flush and snuck a hand back behind Eliot's back. This time, it wasn’t reassuring or comforting; it felt suggestive, playfully predatory.

"Mhm," Eliot said and then he couldn't stop himself, he tilted his head down to capture Quentin in a kiss. There was a flood of relief at the feeling of Quentin's lips, at the surety of his hands. He felt Quentin's hand moving down over his back until he reached his thigh and pulled, hitching his leg up and giving himself room to push his knee in between Eliot's thighs and it made Eliot gasp, made him feel open and vulnerable in a way that only Quentin could. They moved like mercury against one another, liquid and slow, without goals or ends in mind.

After a while, Eliot pulled away to laugh, warm against Quentin's cheek. "You know, I wish I could meet him and embarrass the both of you with how much I love you," he said.

"Oh God.” 

Eliot grew giddy at the thought and even more so at Quentin’s embarrassment. The flush on Quentin's cheeks had made its way down to his chest, turning even the bottoms of his ribs a little splotchy. Eliot felt like he could finally breathe again.

"Please, imagine, I don't know. Pretend it's undergrad and you're taking me home for Christmas and you're all nervous because you've never brought anyone home before," he said. "And I can’t stop kissing you every time we’re alone because I’m, you know, me but also I’m like, twenty and literally always horny." He smiled and said, “Oh my God, Q, would he have made us sleep in separate rooms? Would I have had to sleep with all the model planes?”

“Oh my god, please, shut up.”

“Would he have been like, _a good ally_? Oh, I bet he would’ve - I bet he would’ve tried way too hard and asked us all sorts of weird questions and embarrassed the shit out of you.” He turned to the nightstand for his glasses and balanced them on the tip of his nose, looking over the rims in the way his mother always had. He lowered his voice and affected what he imagined to be a vaguely New York accent. “Now Quentin,” he said, “did you say you were bisexual or pansexual, I just want to make sure I’m getting it right."

“Eliot, I swear, if you don’t stop,” Quentin said and his shoulders shook with laughter. “You sound like Al Pacino, what the fuck was that voice?”

Eliot grinned. “You making fun of me, Coldwater?” he said. He tossed his glasses to the side and rolled over on top of him, straddling his hips and bracketing his face with his forearms.

“No, of course not,” Quentin laughed. Of all his parts, the lines around his eyes were Eliot’s favorite; he was absolutely weak for the way they curved down into his cheeks when he was really, truly happy. It was always his tell and it made Eliot's heart stall out.

They reminded Eliot of how good he had it. There was always some part of him that felt like this was all too good to be true, that couldn’t believe he was allowed this kind of comfort. As a teenager, he’d had more fantasies about exactly this life than he wanted to admit - of getting away from the farm, from his family, of having an apartment in the city with a boy who loved him. He could imagine it so clearly, and those dreams had been a balm after every fight, every injury.

Then he had spent much of his early adulthood trying convince himself he wasn't the type to settle down, that it wasn't in the cards for him. By the time he was 25, he had so thoroughly bought into his own bullshit that when the opportunity presented itself, when Quentin had first opened that door, he'd run away. When finally he woke up in a hospital bed, intubated and full of needles, the first thing he saw was Quentin, asleep with his head in Margo's lap. Even under the fog of magic and morphine, Eliot knew that he couldn't run away again.

He bent down to kiss Quentin’s laugh lines, then, slow and steady until Quentin pulled him in for full, soft kisses. His mouth was yielding underneath Eliot's, his hands exploratory over Eliot's ribs. Everything around them felt bright. Second chances were precious things.

Eliot laid back and pulled Quentin to rest on his chest.

"Hey," he said. Quentin responded with a kiss to his sternum.

"You know, I - I'm sorry I wasn't there when he died. That I wasn't there for you." Eliot said. Quentin looked up at him and frowned.

"El, no, no, c'mon."

"I know - I mean, I know there was nothing to be done about it at the time. But I am sorry. I wish I could have been."

Quentin exhaled. He played with the hair on Eliot's chest for a few lingering seconds.

“It’s okay. But thank you. And thank you for being here now.”

Eliot knew he couldn't entirely understand what it meant to be in the kind of pain Quentin was in. He wasn’t sure Quentin could understand his, either. What mattered was that they tried.

Because he also knew that this was what it meant to grow up. He knew that it meant learning to hold the things he'd avoided his whole life, learning to pluck them out of their secret places and hold them up to the sunlight, where he and Quentin could see them and change their positions just so, adjusting until they refracted new colors he never could have created on his own. It meant learning to hold out his hands, to accept what he was given. It meant that he deserved every good thing Quentin offered, and that he could be someone Quentin deserved.

Quentin held him tight as morning verged on the afternoon. The sun would only make them warmer.

**Author's Note:**

> all my love, especially to all the queers who've ever been told that they owe their parents forgiveness.
> 
> [tumblr](http://propinquitous.tumblr.com)


End file.
